small bites, from an unusual plate

Tag Archives: marrried life

I learned that runt meant Sadie was just behind the doggie curve… not destined to remain inherently mellow.

Miss Fred learned she could hide under the wooden rocking chair, shoot her left paw out and slap Sadie’s face as our tireless pup ran by in pursuit of her red ball.

We doggedly tried to get that on video tape, sure we could with $10,000 on America’s Funniest Videos. Back then video meant a large clunky machine with a blinding light near the lens. It didn’t help that it needed to be retrieved from the office closet, either. We left it out on the dining room table for a very long time. Freddie never cooperated.

Jeff learned something, too. “Hmm,” he said self-quizzically one day, after Sadie got into what Jeff humorously named the “no-bake doggie buffet.” She’d root around in Fred’s box and stealthily eat the crunch-coated brown stuff. The thing is she wasn’t as stealth as she thought, but by the time we saw the cat litter impacted in her nostrils, the deed had already been done. “Ya know,” he said thoughtfully. “I don’t think I’d ever heard you yell – before we got a dog.”

At about 6 months old Sadie had appropriately doubled her width, but something wasn’t quite right.

As she grew, her legs grew to twice the expected height. She wasn’t quite sure what to do with her long limbs, either. Instead of a low-to-the-ground JR scoot, Sadie pranced around like Bambi.

I said to Jeff, “I don’t think she’s normal.” Jeff glanced over at me and asked, “What do you mean?”

“I mean… her legs, and her tail…” I pointed to where Sadie stood smiling. “She shouldn’t be that tall. She’s like a Jack Russell on stilts! And her tail? Is it supposed to be that long….?”

Jeff tilted his head to that doggie-don’t-understand angle. After a beat, he peered over his glasses at me. “I told ya she looked different and probably wouldn’t get adopted…”

I tilted my head to an unnatural angle even for a dog and said, “What?”

“Yeah,” he said shrugging his shoulders. “She didn’t look like the other ones…. and her tail didn’t get docked because she was too tiny and weak.”

I struggled with this news. “She was weak?” I asked. “Sickly?” I asked. “We got a defective dog?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Jeff said eyeballing me cautiously. He gnawed on his bottom lip, took a big breath and sighed. Looking at the floor, he pressed his lips together like he was trying to come up with the just right thing to say. Nodding once to himself, he looked up and continued on patiently, “That’s what runt means.…”

I found this sweet-sad note from my father to Jeff. I don’t have Jeff’s original part of the email, but the subject reads, ‘Carnation Milk.’

From: Dad

Sent: Monday, May 27, 2002

To: Jeff & Jodi

Real funny! Keep them coming!

I really enjoyed your visit. I wish we could have spent more time doing things together that guys do. Maybe things will turn around someday for the both of us. Let’s keep the faith and try real hard.

Miss you already,

Dad (It’s not often that a guy has three dads)

P.S. Jodi, are you going to change your email address to “Korte.”

About the air horn:

There’d rarely been a night when Jeff hadn’t woken up at least once. He’d wander the house, have a snack, watch tv or get on the computer. I’d gotten used to that and barely noticed anymore.

one night in early June 2004, Jeff had decided that he did not want to possibly disturb Nannee by using the computer in the office room next to hers. Instead, he’d gone to the den and fallen asleep to the TV.

In the morning, Nannee let Jeff know she’s had a very rough night. She thought she might have been having a heart attack and called out to us repeatedly. At the other end of the house, we had not heard her. She insisted she felt fine that morning, and p’shawed the suggestion that she visit her doctor, saying it hadn’t been that long ago that she’d seen him.

It was Jeff’s idea to provide Nannee with an air horn. I wasn’t home when they tested it. As we went to bed, I worried that we might not hear it with our bedroom door closed. Jeff assured me, we’d hear it, but left the door open to ease my mind.

The next night, I heard the air horn. Jeff heard the air horn, and with the windows open on that cool June night, most of the neighborhood probably heard it to. I was already jolted half out of bed, when Jeff took off from his side, closest to the bedroom door.

He got there first and called back to me to call 911. Nannee went by ambulance to Bixby, then by ambulance to Toledo. The Bixby doctor was quite angry when he spoke to us following some tests. He ordered a stomach pump, curtly demanded to know who her doctor was and then left us in the curtain-divided emergency room.

When he came back, he was more subdued. Nannee and her doctor must have known her digestive system was failing. She hadn’t shared that with us. She had told us, though, that she didn’t want to die in a hospital.